The rented yurt claimed to sleep four and, from the outside, we figured we were going to need that extra tent for our fifth, Aunt Polly. But it turned out to be a cartoon tent, with the inside ten times bigger than the outside. The forecast didn’t look good and the track was already muddy. Confident that the professionally assembled yurt would do better than the Henderson-assembled tent from last year, we dropped the gear, made small talk with our new neighbors, admired the surrounding Tipis and covered wagons and headed out to find some bands, beer and, for the ladies, some wine in a bag.

Two plus days of mud, food, drink, music (good: Dinosaur Jr., Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Orbital, Explosions in the Sky, Fourtet, Madness; not my favorite: Brian Wilson, Halfset), the kids were tired and whining to head home for the comfort of the XBox and refrigerator. Facty was suffering from wellie blisters, and the skies opened. A half-hearted attempt to stick out the final day, and it was back to the yurt to pack up and steel ourselves for the long walk to the rental car.

More pictures here.

With Facty’s parents visiting from the States, we toured Blarney, Cobh, Killarney, the Ring of Kerry, Bunratty Castle, Cliffs of Moher, and the Burren. This is detail of a stained glass window in Bunratty.

This was our second trip to some of these destinations, including Blarney Castle. I’ve still not been convinced to kiss the stone, which is at the very top of the wall on the left in this picture.

Cobh is a beautiful little port town just south of Cork, where many of the Irish immigrants through history boarded ships leaving Ireland for the last time. We happened to visit on the anniversary of the Titanic’s arrival in Cobh (then known as Queenstown), which was its last stop before sinking. This cathedral, St. Colman’s, dominates the skyline.

More photos from the trip are in the flickr set, including these last two, for Iggy.

Bonus! Poker content! We found a very popular poker player in the Ring of Kerry. He was kind enough to pose for a photo with Birdy.

Spent some time yesterday in the cemetery. While facty was off looking for stuff, I took some photos.

This is the headstone of George Johnstone Stoney, best known for inventing the term “electron” in 1894. According to Wikipedia, he was the first to estimate the number of molecules in a cubic millimeter of gas. He has craters on the moon and Mars named for him (as well as a street near the cemetery, Stoney Road) and was a distant relative of Alan Turing.

Nerdtastic.

The people here continue to charm us. We ended up having a family dinner in Scott’s pub one early evening night in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced ‘done leary’). After dinner, we walked across the street to wait for the bus and then realized we didn’t have any coins for the bus fare. I ran back across to the pub to get change and then quickly back — I wasn’t gone more than 30 seconds. As i arrived back, a very old man in a very old suit who had been slowly shuffling towards the bus stop passed us, stopped, mumbled something at me and smiled. I said, “I’m sorry?” and he repeated in his thick Irish accent, “That was a very quick pint!”

I can’t really do justice to the look of the old guy or his perfect comedic timing.

Next weekend is attempt two of our short trip to Venice, Italy. We were scheduled to go three weeks ago, but facty wrenched something in her back on the morning we were leaving. The back is healing, slowly, and the apartment we rented was available, so off we go. Should come back with a full memory card of pics.

Finally, it’s nice to see Iggy back in his home. No offense at all to pokerworks, but it was a bit like seeing a professional athelete spend a season with a different team at the end of his career. The play was the same, but the uniform just didn’t quite look right.

There are plenty of things about Ireland that are the same as the States. There’s plenty of the same terrible restaurants here: McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Burger King, TGIFriday’s. I can watch a ton of bad U.S. television (this actually warrants its own post). People complain about the same things – politicians, weather, traffic, sports, cost of living.

Of course, much is also different. I bagged my own groceries today. I drove on the left side of the road. The barbers all seem to be young eastern european women. We use phrases such as “I’ll have chicken goujon”, which the boy likes to say, and “Yes, I’ll have another pint”, which I like to say.

So tonight we’re having dinner and there comes a knock on the door. I go to answer it and find a teen with a pen and paper in hand, clearly about to ask me to sign up for something. This happened all the times in the States, too. Usually a magazine subscription for the baseball team, or some chocolate to support the local school. In those cases, I normally try to save the kid his breath and tell him I’m not interested before he can get too far into his rehearsed speech.

Why didn’t I do that this time? I guess because it’s Ireland and I can’t be so sure this is the same. So I let the kid take his deep breath and launch into this pitch. And he tells me he is looking to raise money to fund a trip around the U.K. for his under-16 snooker team to compete against
other teams. And there was a raffle and prizes and …

Yes, he said snooker. I made him repeat that part.

Snooker. As in, that crazy billiards game with a few numbered balls and the 72 red balls racked up in some wacky configuration played on a table bigger than your swimming pool.

Well, that *is* different. An under-16 snooker team? For some reason all I could picture were 10 kids that look like Butch from the Little Rascals loitering in front of the pool hall trying to scare up a game. Are there snooker coaches? Are there overbearing snooker dads who make the kids practice drills for hours and yell at these hypothetical snooker coaches when they don’t put their kid in a match at the right time? Do they all get snooker trophies at the end of the year with their names engraved on them? Do they have “Most Improved” or “Best Sportsmanship” awards? I wonder if they wear the theatre usher outfits the pros wear.

Luckily for the kid, I’d been watching some snooker in the last month. Some U.K. Championship something-or-other. They showed it every night for at least a week on one of the BBC Channels. And i’ll admit, I got hooked. It was riveting. A bit slow. More strategy than our billiards.

I looked down at the kid signup sheet in his hand. He had a list of names, addresses, and amounts. Every amount was 10 euros.

I reached for my wallet. “You have change for a 20?”

The kid broke in to a smile. “Yeah, can I get your name….”